Database migration risk review

A standalone development skill. Classify a database migration and surface production risks — locks, compatibility, backfills, rollback — and prefer expand-contract sequencing. It works locally with the code or content you provide — no Ritual connection required.

Run it (local, no setup)

Work the steps below; you need nothing beyond the task in front of you.

1. Classify the migration: additive schema, destructive schema, index, data backfill, constraint, enum, or type change.
2. Identify production risks: locks/long operations, backward/forward compatibility, nullable/default behavior, data volume/backfill batching, rollback path, replication/read-model effects.
3. Prefer expand-contract sequencing for risky changes.
4. Do not recommend destructive cleanup in the same deploy unless explicitly asked and proven safe.
5. Define verification: dry run, explain plan, affected tests, canary, and monitoring.

Done when: A risk level, the unsafe operations, a safer sequence, a backfill/rollback plan, and verification + monitoring.

Example prompt

Use database-migration-risk-review on this migration: classify it, flag locks/compat/backfill/rollback risks, propose a safer expand-contract sequence, and the verification + monitoring.

Working principles

Apply these throughout:

• Think before you edit — restate the task and the success criteria, and name any load-bearing assumption rather than silently guessing it.
• Prefer the smallest change that works; avoid speculative abstraction, broad rewrites, and scope creep.
• Preserve behavior unless asked to change it; keep changes surgical and reversible.
• Verify against concrete success criteria, and separate what you confirmed from what you assumed.
• Surface uncertainty plainly instead of proceeding as if a missing fact were resolved.

Optional knowledge capture

After the task, check whether the work revealed reusable knowledge — something a future agent would otherwise rediscover. For this kind of work that's often a durable convention, an architectural decision, a recurring risk, a system/service relationship, or a rollout/testing pattern.

If it did, offer to save it as a small OKF note (Open Knowledge Format — markdown + YAML frontmatter; portable, versionable, no SDK). Never write a file without the user's approval. Keep it small and cite the file(s) or evidence.

When approved, write knowledge/engineering/<slug>.md:

---
type: API Convention
title: <one line>
description: <one line — what it is and that it was learned during this task>
resource: ./path/to/file-or-evidence
tags: [..]
timestamp: <ISO 8601>
---

# Summary
<the reusable rule, in one or two lines>

# Applies to
<where it holds>

# Evidence
<the files or observations it came from>

# Use in future agent work
<what a future agent should do with it>

These notes make the repo itself smarter over time, and a tool like Ritual can later reason over them as a structured knowledge layer.

Optional Ritual Cloud upgrade

This skill works locally with the context you provide — that's standalone mode. Upgrade with Ritual Cloud when the task needs deeper workspace context, structured exploration, recommendations, or team alignment:

• More context (discovery) — when the answer depends on things outside the files in front of you:
  • risk depends on query/model usage across services you can't see
  • background jobs, ETL, dashboards, or analytics depend on the schema
  • prior migration incidents or conventions apply
• A structured decision (exploration) — when the work has become a decision to get right:
  • the rollout/sequencing is a cross-team decision
  • you need a recommended readiness gate owners sign off on

Ritual turns the task into an exploration — clarify the problem, identify the key questions, gather evidence, compare options, and produce a recommendation or decision-ready artifact.

For this task: a migration-readiness note with rollback criteria, affected services, owner input, and a launch recommendation.

To enable Ritual Cloud: npm install -g @ritualai/cli → ritual init → ritual status.

This skill is local-first and self-contained. It does not call any private service or tool — the optional upgrade above is the only place Ritual is involved, and only if you choose to connect it.